


we go as fire

by Anemoi



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: When you were young you went to a football game with your dad. Rewind this, somehow, and hold it in your memory: even though it wasn’t significant exactly, not in the same way as the first time you went to a match with your dad, the first time you held your own football boots in your hands, or the first time you put pen to paper on a professional contract. The memory should not be significant, except in retrospect.It was a Champions League final.





	we go as fire

 

When you were young you went to a football game with your dad. Rewind this, somehow, and hold it in your memory: even though it wasn’t significant exactly, not in the same way as the first time you went to a match with your dad, the first time you held your own football boots in your hands, or the first time you put pen to paper on a professional contract. The memory should not be significant, except in retrospect. 

It was a Champions League final. 

  
  


-

  
  


It’s hard to hold a memory. You don’t recall much of the game, or how it felt walking into Old Trafford and climbing the stairs to your seat, the stage set and the teams waiting to start on the field- but somehow you remember the train ride there, desperately fighting back motion sickness. Something in you would not have missed it for the world. Mostly it was bragging rights in the playground and the training fields-  _ I’m going to watch Juventus and Milan in the Champions League final with my dad! _ \- mostly just the sense of it, football on a bigger stage than the Premier League, astronomically bigger and better than the 50 by 80 yard field marked out with posts and lines you play on- you wanted to see what it was like. Maybe some magic would drift up from the field and settle on your skin, and then you, too, will be part of that shimmering spectacle. 

The thing is, you knew you weren’t special. Even at 10. 

 

-

 

You were good, you knew that much. You were good  _ enough.  _ The subjectivity of memory- how good were you really? Maybe it’s best to skip a few years, 2003 to 2012, you’re in the new manager’s office, this new manager who’s swept into Dalglish’s place and promised Liverpool a future, promised silverware, promised everything and more: he says,  _ Jordan, you could go to Fulham.  _

Fulham. 

The thing is, you knew you weren’t special, but also: you knew you were pretty stubborn. Maybe that’s an understatement: you were very stubborn, and angry, and devastated. You cannot remember if your fingers shook when you touched the table, lightly, not looking up at the Manager.  _ Fulham.  _ You don’t want to play for Fulham. You want to play for Liverpool. At that moment you realised, despite having been there just short of a year- you want to play for Liverpool. Your team. 

 

-

Now rewind that memory again: see, nothing has come easy to you. Nothing, not even a football team, a sense of belonging, that boyish swoop of your heart when you see  _ your  _ ground for the first time,  _ your  _ crest,  _ your  _ team- No. You’re not like Gerrard, captain, Steven George Gerrard, a Scouser born and bred. Liverpool were just a great club until somewhere along the line it became your club. You couldn’t pinpoint when that happened. 

So then, why Liverpool? Maybe only because someone told you you couldn’t. Maybe only that. 

  
  
  


-

  
  


But rewind a little more, anyway. Your first goal for Liverpool, in Anfield: it’s a sunny day, not even just in your memory. It really was a sunny day, and you hit a beautiful left footed shot into the top left hand side past the keeper, and you’re running, and there’s so much hope in you when you shout, so much hope-

Fast forward, after that, watch every goal you’ve scored for Liverpool, even though they are just a piece of the reason, the only part of the whole of it that you could point to. There’s something more, but how do you quantify it? How many times you’ve sat on the bench and frozen, fingers twisted in your pockets and still believed? How many times you’ve ran around the pitch in Melwood, running till you threw up from the strain? How many times you’ve sat in the treatment room, facing down the games missed, the solitary airless confinement of injury alone? 

All that and more, you think. 

  
  


-

 

Memory is fragile anyway, so it’s easy to skip over those earlier days, working yourself into the team, making yourself something indispensable. It’s hard work, but you’ve never complained about that. You weren’t special, you know. You were  _ very good,  _ but never  _ excellent.  _ But you wanted more, and so: the armband. 

_ Was I worthy?  _ There’s no one to answer that. The simple fact of the matter was Daniel left, and someone had to have the armband after Steven, and that someone was you. You’ve worked hard to make it so. It was yours, earned. 

But you can imagine, how it seems. You weren’t extraordinary, but neither were Liverpool. This incarnation of Liverpool, too new and uncertain, the unspoken  _ Not good enough _ hovering above them like some dark cloud. The armband is yours because there’s no one else- that’s how it seems.    
  


-

 

The captain. The leader. The skipper. And in Liverpool: the talisman. The man they looked for when there was no hope left, the miracle man who can always turn the tide. When you first came to Liverpool you’d watch Steven pull up the armband, sometimes, when it began to slip down his arm. He’d tug at it, absently, bringing his hands up afterwards to clap at the team and shout encouragement or obscenities, depending. 

You watch him pull it off, now, bring it to you and slip it up your arm, settle around your bicep. He doesn’t look you in the eye and you’re grateful, because then you can’t imagine anything you see in his eyes, like uncertainty, or distrust. He claps you on the shoulder, once. You can’t imagine what it felt like, for him, but you didn’t quite care anymore. You bring your hands up and clap at the team. Your team. 

Before Steven leaves you expected a big talk or something, some imparting of advice.  _ This is how I carried Liverpool football club and now you can too! _ But you were wrong. Steven probably never thought about his duties like something he could pass on. Maybe it was simply a part of him, and he couldn’t turn it off even if he tried. Even if he’d put the armband on your arm. He leaves and you feel it, then. The utter weight of what it meant. And you, Jordan Brian Henderson, unspecial, good but not excellent, an apt symbol of what the great and glorious Liverpool have become in the new age. 

  
  


-

 

Looking back now it’s pretty obvious you had no idea what it meant, despite all the warnings, despite thinking you knew.  _ Obviously  _ the captain shoulders the team even when the team becomes a burden, obviously he must stand in front of them, take the blame but never the adulation, he must push on even when there’s no hope, he must be the last one to give up, always. 

Come to think of it, maybe you were better prepared than you thought. After all, that was what you had done, all along.    
  


-

 

Anyway, back to 2003 and you’re in Old Trafford, swiveling your head around to follow the play, and you don’t remember but you must have said it,  _ I’ll play in the Champions League final one day _ . Your dad’s hand heavy on your head, enveloping you with his pride. He’d believed. You wonder now if belief could be passed on like that, something in the genes. And he was right, and you were right, and you play in the Champions League final in 2018, and you lose. 

Nothing has ever come easy to you, so on some level it was to be expected. 

  
  


-

  
  


After the final was the first time you started wondering about Steven. You were about as different as Liverpool captains could be, but now, this tenuous connection. Losing a Champions League final. He had done that, too. You wonder if Steven had ever felt like the team was too heavy to hold. Maybe they needed someone who fitted, like James, stoic and easy, or Virgil, so startlingly brilliant he dragged the team up along with him. Or even Trent, Liverpool born and bred, like Steven. You weren’t any of those things. All you had was your stubbornness. All you had was this unshakeable belief, against every supporting evidence, that forced you along like a wave. 

_ Am I worthy?  _ There is never anyone to answer that. You didn’t know if you’d believe them now if you tried. 

One more memory for the season after the first final: your goal against Southampton. It’s nothing like the first goal you scored for Liverpool, Bobby’s pass arriving on a plate for you so all you had to do was tap it in, but it’s been so long, and you’ve forgotten so much in that determination, but you don’t forget this: the way the world looks at you now, as though they’ve forgotten, too. Jordan Brian Henderson, captain of Liverpool. 

 

_ Have you redeemed yourself?   _ What is there to redeem?

  
  


-

 

Penultimately, this: 

 

In Anfield, against Barcelona. The need outstrips you on the field. You don’t need to hold the team anymore, don’t need to provide inspiration or lift them up with some miracle or push them on, you only needed to be part of them, and so you are. This is what you’ve worked for, to be a part of them. It didn’t matter that your knee hurt, that you were still two goals away from equalizing, that you only had 45 minutes and added time to turn everything around. 

 

It’s come down to this. You in the armband-  _ You ripping the armband off and handing it to Milly but it doesn’t change what you are, you’re still the captain when you’re injured-  _ You raising your hands to clap the team on. And you, sliding to the crowd on your knees at full time, falling flat on your back with no breath left in your lungs, because again. Full circle. The Champions League final, 2019.  

  
  


-

  
  


Full circle: How do you condense it? Eight years of wanting. Sixteen years of wanting. Twenty eight. The tabloids and the pundits, the doubt and the weight of it all, the team you carry for stubbornness and for love.   _ Am I worthy?  _ You don’t need anyone to answer that, anymore. You’ve known the answer before you lifted the silver trophy, as high as Gerrard did. As high as Hughs and Thompson and Souness too, this short list of Liverpool captains who’ve lifted this cup. If you could go back now, tell the boy you used to be the answer, you wouldn’t. Would you? He’d probably want to know more about the final. How you won it. Did it feel like everything you’ve ever wanted? 

  
  


Of course it is: think of that beautiful feeling, there on the pitch in Old Trafford in 2003, the gleam and shine of everything, everyone in the world watching transfixed. The feeling that curled your hands into fists and set your heart alight, squinting your eyes to make out the trophy twinkling on its stand like a far off star. 

 

Now your hands don’t tremble when you take it off the stand. When you raise it-  of course- it’s everything. Everything and more. 

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


-And one last thing, maybe- just one more thing to fill out your memory. 

 

The last day of the season in Anfield when you’ve lost the league and won against Wolves: It’s still a sunny day. The Kop are singing your song,  _ Jordan Henderson, Jordan Henderson, Jordan Henderson,  _ as you go by with a daughter in each arm. You close your eyes for a moment and the sun is still bright. You are still home. All along and all of a sudden and all at once. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
